MOULTRIE, Ga. — Due to the sheer number of downed limbs and trees, and how they’re impacting individual customers more so than large groups of houses restoring power in Moultrie looks to be a painstaking task.

Only three neighborhoods in the city of Moultrie still have an outage issue, but with individual houses scattered around also calling for power restoration it will take some time, Moultrie Utilities Director Elvira Gibson said Friday afternoon.

The neighborhoods where crews were working accounted for about 200 customers still without power into the afternoon, but that number does not include the individual homes requiring assistance.

“I have assessed a lot of the damage,” Gibson said. “There doesn’t appear to be a lot of property damage, but there are a lot of downed trees. Everywhere you turn there’s a limb on a line” that maybe affects one residence.

“Those wires are live, (so) we’ve got to be careful with every one,” she said. “The quantity of people that have downed lines is massive.”

The city utility fielded calls through the night, but the heavy volume did not start during the worst of the storm. Instead they started when residents alarm clocks did — or didn’t — start ringing.

“That greatly increased when people started waking up,” Gibson said. “I would like to ask that customers be patient.”

Georgia Power and Colquitt EMC also were out restoring power in rural parts of the county, with hundreds of customers remaining without power into the afternoon.

Doerun utility workers had power restored throughout the city by about 10:30 a.m. Friday.